Inside the Phillies with MLB.com beat writer Todd Zolecki

Your Tuesday Injury Update

Pedro Martinez. He left Saturday’s start in Atlanta after three innings after he strained a muscle on the right side of his neck while swinging the bat. Martinez said he felt a little better after visiting a chiropractor in Miami, but to give him extra time to recover the Phillies pushed back his start from Friday to Saturday in Milwaukee. Cliff Lee will pitch Friday instead. Ruben Amaro Jr. said Martinez threw today and felt pretty good, but the Phillies will know more after tomorrow’s bullpen session.

Brett Myers. He had a MRI on his right shoulder today in Philadelphia. He has a Grade 1 strain of his right latissimus dorsi. He will throw a bullpen next Tuesday, and the Phillies said they hope he will be able to pitch again before the end of the regular season.

Scott Eyre. He has not pitched since Sept. 7 because of a “loose body” in his left elbow. He threw a bullpen session before Game 1 of today’s doubleheader against the Marlins, and pitching coach Rich Dubee pronounced Eyre ready for action.

J.A. Happ. He is fine and will start Thursday in Milwaukee as scheduled. He left Friday’s game in Atlanta after three innings after manager Charlie Manuel thought he favored the rib cage muscle that caused him to miss his previous two starts.

Chan Ho Park. He continues to progress from a strained right hamstring. There is no schedule for when he might pitch again, but Amaro said it is possible Park could begin pitching as early as next week.

J.C. Romero. He threw 50 pitches in a bullpen session yesterday in Clearwater, Fla. He is expected to pitch Thursday in the Instructional League.

Jack Taschner. He has a strained back and continues to progress in Clearwater, Amaro said.

Carlos Ruiz. He said his sprained left wrist feels better and will play in Game 2.

Greg Dobbs. Miguel Cairo started at third base in Game 1 because Manuel said Dobbs’ right calif isn’t completely healthy. Dobbs said it won’t be 100 percent the remainder of the season, but it doesn’t affect him at the plate.

UPDATE ON MYERS (8:08 p.m.) READ ABOVE.

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It’s about 30 minutes before first pitch in Game 1 and I’m guess there aren’t more than 200 fans in the stands.

It’s really encouraging seeing the Phils hit a decent pitcher like Josh Johnson. These kind of games are a better gage of the Phils level of play going into the playoffs. Jason is hitting like he wants to reach that 100 RBI plateau tonight.

There’s a list to turn your stomach. Hope these guys rehab well. I also really wish more of S. Fla would get behind the Marlins. Year after year the produce a good team that contends really well (heck the even have 2 WS titles) and game attendance is so pitiful. How many teams with twice their salary were out of contention at the beginning of August?

They scratch out some hits and runs off one of the best pitchers in the first game and then don’t show up against Sanchez – 20+ strikeouts in the double header. I thought Cholly would’ve given a few people the second game off, but it was basically the same lineup.

Another reason the marlins should be eliminated from the league what where there a total of 4000 people there yesterday combined and most of them were Phillies fans, what a disgrace to call them a major league baseball team. A new stadium will help for maybe a half of season down there.

RPKN…: You don’t understand. They are building the new stadium with a cpacity of 6500 so it will always be at least half full. Give teh impression that they can draw a crowd. (We all know that the Blue Claws from A ball have higher attendence figures then the (dead) fish)

The Marlins will never draw, even with a new stadium. This is a team that has won two WS in their short life and has a young, exciting, contending team almost every year. Baseball seriously needs to contract by about four teams, but it will never happen.

phan: Absolutely. Delete the Nationals and Marlin at the very least. Lump both leagues together into one and take the top 4 teams in each league to the playoffs.
I’ve never understood the point to having divisions. Rivalries are regional (most of the time) and those teams will play each other anyway. This way, you’ll always have the best 4 teams from each league in the playoffs and avoid the travesty of last year’s NFL season where the Chargers got home field advantage with an 8-8 record and eliminate these ridiculous wild card races.

divisions are good for the game. It adds excitement by creating playoff races. Unlike football (and basketball and hockey) where too many teams make the playoffs out of 32 teams only 8 make it. the wild card ensures that a good team in a great division makes it and can win it all (see this year’s RSox, and the Cardinals from a few years ago). I agree, however about dumping at least two teams from the big leagues. The need for an extra 50 players has created a situation where the pitching is sub par at best (remember when 3.00 was the standard for ERA?) and piss poor at worst.

f.i.j.: But what kind of measure is ERA if pitchers don’t pitch 9 innings? Some of them hardly get through 5, so an ERA spans two games. A pitcher’s average runs per 9 innings is an irrelevant statistic in today’s game.

I’ll never agree that divisions are good for any sport. Mathematically, if you split a league into too many divisions (as has happened in football) you dilute the playoff teams and potentially have division winners with worse records than second or third place teams in other divisions.
If all the wild card is going to do is take the fourth best record in each league, why bother splitting them into divisions at all? It doesn’t make sense.

Scott Franzke said that there were so few people at the game yesterday he could hear what each of them were saying even if they whispered. It’s really ashame. Both Florida teams should merge. They both have fairly young exciting players and have been playoff/WS contenders.

Have you people ever tried to go to a Marlins game in the summer? It’s routinely in excess of 100 degrees, more humid than you can ever imagine, and carries the daily threat of a multi-hour rain delay. They will draw just fine once the retractable roof stadium is built. I agree that the talent pool is a bit diluted with a 30 team league, but ever-increasing player development programs in Latin America and in American cities are starting to fill that gap.

Believe it or not Oakland has the lowest attendance is MLB. The Marlins are 28, Pittsburgh 29, and Oakland 30. Philadelphia is 3rd, NY Yankees 2nd, LA Dodgers 1st. Tampa is 20. http://espn.go.com/mlb/attendance

ERA still does matter It’s teh average number of runs you would have given up in 9 innings pitched. Therefore, if you only pitched 6, and gave up 3 (what is considered a quality start) your ERA is 4.50. Compare this mark with that of the 1980’s where anything over 3.00 was looked down upon. That would come to giving up 2 runs per 6 innings.

As for divisions, like anything else, balance is the name of the game. I’m not sure baseball needs three divisions in each league (I still remember the days’s of only two) but a quick look at the standings show that the 4 best teams will qualify for the playoffs in the NL and the three races held the excitement for fans in Atlanta, Colorodo, San Fran etc thus increasing attendence and revenue for those teams. Hopefully that revenue will be put back into the teams and they will be able to improve for next year, etc.

the problem with football is that teams under 500 are able to qualify due to the overall number of teams who make the playoffs. Hockey and basketball are even worse with nearly 80% of the teams making the playoffs. Instead of playing a season to qualify, they play one to be disqualified.

ERA is a good quick reference stat, but it’s subject to a lot of things that the pitcher can’t control, like the quality of the defense behind you, luck (bloop hits falling in, line drives getting hit right at a fielder), and what the official scorer decides on a given day is an “error.” It’s certainly better than wins and fine to look at if you have nothing else to go off of, but is not a very accurate gauge of a pitcher’s isolated performance.

f.i.j.: The NFL only has one more playoff team than MLB. The division winners and TWO wild cards. How’d you like to be a Patriots fan last year? They went 11-5 and didn’t make the playoffs while the Chargers won the West with an 8-8 record and got home field.

Your pie in the sky references to revenues don’t matter a bit.

The reason they measure ERA is because pitchers used to pitch 9 innings. As the game progressed (regressed?) the stat lost its meaning. And I remember when there were no divisions.
Divisions are artificial. They’re designed to encourage rivalries, but the rivalires are made-up. Do you think Yankees fans would hate Red Sox fans regardless of what division they were in? The Dodgers and Giants have hated each other for decades.
It’s pointless. If the 4 best teams are making the playoffs, then just take the 4 best teams. Who cares about the NL East or the AL Central?

I don’t understand your objection muleman. Runs per 9 is just one way to scale the statistic. Just because a pitcher doesn’t throw nine innings per outing doesn’t make that any less valid. It’s a rate stat, it’s not supposed to be “runs per each outing in which the pitcher pitches.” There are serious issues with ERA (see my above post) but that’s not one of them.

phylan: You don’t understand? What’s the point of runs per 9 if nobody (or hardly anybody) pitches 9 innings? It isn’t a good measure or “runs per outing” which is what 9 innings used to be to a starter. It’s antiquated and time to replace it as a measure of a starting pitcher’s effectiveness.

let’s repalace the divisor by 5 instead of 9. That is a more accurate measure of runs per start. Why else would they have instituted the “quality start” stat?

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